(1)Maintenance and improvement works The Chief Executive may authorise work to be carried out for the maintenance or improvement of an access road.

(2) Work authorised under this section may only be carried out to enable the access road to continue to be used for the purposes for which the road was used before land on which the road is situated was vested in the Minister.

(3) Such maintenance and improvement work may be carried out even if it involves ancillary work on reserved land that adjoins the land on which the access road is situated.

(4) The carrying out of work authorised under this section is not a contravention of this Act or the regulations.

(5)Determination of width of existing access roads At the time an exclusion order is made, the Minister may, by order published in the Gazette, determine a width (not being a width greater than 30 metres) for an access road that is to be excluded from reservation under this Act by the exclusion order.

Note.

Under the various provisions relating to access roads on National Park Estate lands, certain access roads were vested in the Minister as land acquired under Part 11 and not reserved under this Act. These provisions require the Minister to determine within specified times whether those access roads are to be excluded from reservation (and remain as land acquired under Part 11) or included in the reserved lands surrounding them.

(6) An order under subsection (5) may:

(a) be made only with the concurrence of the Minister administering the Forestry Act 2012, and

(b) be made by the same order that constitutes the exclusion order concerned, and

(c) only be made if the Minister has determined it is appropriate after considering:

(i) the objects of this Act, and

(ii) whether a road of the determined width is necessary to provide access to land in the vicinity of the road or to provide an appropriate set back (within the meaning of section 188C) from the carriageway of the road.

(7) On the making of an order under subsection (5):

(a) land of the determined width that follows the centreline of the access road (as it existed before the order was made) vests, if it is not already vested, in the Minister on behalf of the Crown for the purposes of Part 11 of this Act for an estate in fee simple, freed and discharged from:

(i) all trusts, obligations, estates, interests, rights of way or other easements, and

(ii) any dedication, reservation, Crown grant or vesting to which the land is subject, and any such dedication, reservation, grant or vesting is revoked, and

(b) the land referred to in paragraph (a) is taken to be an access road and may continue to be used for the purposes for which it was used immediately before the making of the order, and

(c) if any land was vested in the Minister by virtue of being an access road, but is not covered by the land referred to in paragraph (a), the land is reserved as part of the reserved land within which it is situated.